preview

The Evolution of Policing in the UK Essay

Decent Essays

The dictionary definition of the police is “the organized civil force of a state, concerned with maintenance of law and order, the detection and prevention of crime, etc,” (Collins English Dictionary, 2002). This definition states the minimum of what the police actually do. Providing support for families, protecting society from criminals and responding to calls 24 hours a day 7 days a week are just some of the other roles that police have to deal with. In this essay the evolution of the police will be discussed as well as how the police are facing challenges.

The police are continuously developing and have been ever since the beginning of informal policing which saw that everyone who lived in a society had to be responsible for …show more content…

Today’s policing are more punitive because crime itself has developed along with society through the years and therefore needs to be harsher than just locking a criminal in stocks. Although health and safety today probably wouldn’t even allow the use of stocks and would most likely infringe on human rights. In spite of that, modern policing is becoming more community orientated again with new approaches to tackling crime such as creating new roles like community support officers. With this new development, the police are now constantly adapting to which style they use within society. Policing uses 3 main styles in the UK to oppose crime, the first being legalistic style, secondly the watchman style and lastly the service style. Each of these styles has a different way of enforcing the law. The legalistic style focuses more on the law enforcement; arresting and detaining suspects (Dempsey, J. Forst, L, 2011). This style is mainly used in larger cities due to high crime rates. However, this style mainly concentrates on the law breaking than any social problems that may arise such as anti-social behaviour.

The reason we have the police is to maintain order of society (Fahy, Sir P. 2013).

Kuykendal (2001) states, “A police style is how each department and officer view their particular mission or purpose and identify with particular methods

Get Access